Red States, Real Results — and the Case for Ignoring the Culture Wars

By Thunder Report Staff

In a moment that surprised much of the political commentariat, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof is pointing readers toward a reality that doesn’t fit neatly into America’s usual red-state/blue-state narrative: some of the most durable post-pandemic education gains are coming from Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi.

Kristof’s argument is not that these states won a culture war — it’s that they largely refused to fight one at all.

While national politics fixated on ideological battles over curriculum, identity, and symbolism, these states focused on something more mundane and less tweetable: getting kids back in class, teaching them to read, and holding schools accountable for outcomes.

The Results Speak Loudly

The data Kristof highlights is difficult to dismiss:

• Louisiana ranks first nationally in recovery from pandemic reading losses.
• Alabama leads in math recovery and posts the lowest chronic absenteeism rate among tracked states.
• Mississippi, long treated as an educational afterthought, now ranks near the top in fourth-grade reading — and first nationally when demographic factors are adjusted.
• Black fourth-grade students in Mississippi outperform their peers in Massachusetts, a state widely considered the gold standard for public education and one that spends roughly twice as much per pupil.

These gains didn’t come from flashy reforms or massive new spending. They came from consistency.

Ignoring the Noise

Kristof’s central claim is that these states improved because they opted out of the national obsession with cultural signaling.

Instead of rewriting standards every election cycle or turning classrooms into battlegrounds for adult politics, education leaders in these states:

• Stuck with clear academic benchmarks
• Prioritized early literacy and numeracy
• Enforced attendance and promotion standards
• Focused relentlessly on instructional quality, not ideological alignment

Mississippi’s literacy reforms, launched more than a decade ago, are a prime example. They weren’t framed as conservative or progressive. They were framed as necessary — and they were implemented steadily, year after year.

A Quiet Rebuke to Both Sides

Kristof is careful not to frame this as a partisan victory — and he’s right to do so.

The lesson here isn’t that one political tribe outsmarted another. It’s that education improves when leaders stop treating schools as proxies for broader cultural conflicts.

That message cuts both ways.

On the right, it challenges the impulse to nationalize every curriculum debate. On the left, it challenges the assumption that higher spending and symbolic reforms automatically produce better outcomes.

What worked in these states wasn’t ideology — it was restraint.

The Uncomfortable Takeaway

If Kristof is right, the most uncomfortable conclusion for national leaders is this:
America doesn’t need a grand education revolution. It needs fewer distractions.

That may be harder to accept than any partisan critique. Ignoring the culture wars doesn’t generate headlines, fundraising emails, or viral clips. But it may be exactly what allows schools to do what they exist to do in the first place.

Teach kids. Measure results. Repeat.

For a political system addicted to spectacle, that kind of quiet success may be the most radical idea of all.

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